Consciousness; proposed new research (Introduction)

by dhw, Saturday, June 20, 2015, 10:55 (3443 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: The argument that free will looks just like the automatic responses of a single cell is way off the mark. -That is not the argument at all. Experts tell us that bacteria are individual, decision-making, cognitive beings. You say they may look that way, but in fact they are automata directed by factors over which they have no control. A determinist (I am not defending determinism, by the way) will argue that although your actions may look like those of a free agent, you are also directed by factors over which you have no control. That does not mean your responses look like those of a bacterium! It simply means you are applying arbitrary double standards: you insist that what looks like free will must be free will, but what looks like cognition can't be cognition. Shapiro: “Large organs chauvinism, so we like to think that only we can do things in a cognitive way.” Why are you so reluctant to believe that bacteria might be cognitive? What are you afraid of?